A few days go, i had the pleasure of seeing Matt Haig talk again, this time at HOME in Manchester. Myself and Sophie travelled to Doncaster last year for his tour of Notes On A Nervous Planet, and hearing Matt talk about his own issues with anxiety and depression was so inspiring and relatable, i wanted to see him again.

I have a bit of a strange relationship with blogging, reading and generally keeping up with the book blogging community lately. I know I’ve never been the most present on our Twitter and Sarah writes most of the posts for the blog but I’ve felt quite isolated in the online community recently. The reasons are nothing to do with anyone in it but my state of mind right now. This post is mainly just me wanting to vent a little about my conflicting thoughts and also to ask if anyone else has felt similar or has any tips!

I Was Born for This is my first novel by Alice Oseman that I’ve read, and I absolutely adored it. I’ve heard countless incredible things about this story, and I found not knowing anything about this story going in to it was the best thing to do. I was surprised about how much I loved it, how much it lifted me from a reading slump and how happy i felt reading it.

I read Thirteen Reasons Why not so long ago, and enjoyed the story. The writing was okay and it had a unique twist on a teen suffering with mental health issues, being told from someone else’s point of view. However, recently the Netflix adaptation has been released and watched by millions, spreading this story further.

Earlier this week was Mental Health Awareness Day. Mental health is something that i personally am very passionate about and am not afraid to talk about in the slightest. People need to be much more open about mental health and a little less afraid about what others think about the problems. It’s such a taboo topic in our society, lets be much more open and take mental health seriously! But this got me thinking about is mental health taken seriously in YA novels? I’m going to talk about my opinions in this post.

Today (10th October 2016) is Mental Health Awareness Day. This is a day in order to raise awareness for those health issues that cannot necessarily always be seen. Mental health can range from anything from Anxiety or Depression to Schizophrenia. All of these illnesses are just as important as physical disabilities, and they always need more attention as they are such a taboo topic (shamefully). As it is MHAD, i wanted to collect together some books that i think deal with the mental health topic quite well. Here’s a little list of my favourites in case you would like to learn a little more about mental health in fiction.